Batman and Robin: Tomasi and Kubert Talk Giving Robin Superpowers

Robin is back! With the over-sized Robin Rises: Omega #1 issue hitting in late December, Damian Wayne has returned to the living to once again be Batman's sidekick, but with a twist -- now he's got superpowers.

We talked to writer Pete Tomasi and artist/Damian co-creator Andy Kubert about the big development. Hear what they had to say, then let us know your thoughts in the comments!

IGN Comics: I was reading the comments on the review for Batman and Robin #37, and you had our users crying.

Pete Tomasi: [Laughs] My job is accomplished. It's great to be able to give readers a real emotional wallop in the last couple years, be it with issue #17, the lead-up to the Requiem issue, and then the whole Silent Requiem issue -- just a whole bunch of moments that we've been able to give to the readers and plug them in emotionally, which is awesome. I'm happy to hear that. I've been on a deadline, but it's nice to know that people are feeling the story and the characters. That's great.

IGN: What's it like after all this time to finally bring Robin back?

Tomasi: Honestly, I haven't had much time because of the holidays. It's just sort of like my nose to the grindstone. I haven't really looked up. The only time I looked up was when Andy and I, just this morning, got the Robin Rises issue. It really was our first time to just go, "Wow, here it is. It's all done. It's great." And I got all these calls literally half-an-hour after I got the box. So this is pretty much the first day I've thought about it a little bit. So this is good timing. I'm just proud to work with guys like you, me and Pat, on a story I care a lot about.

IGN: What about you, Andy?

Andy Kubert: I just got the comics a little while ago too, and I gotta tell you, I've probably read this thing four times, and I'm very, very proud of the issue. I think it works really, really well. When I heard that the character was going to come back, I asked to be involved with it, because I really wanted to be involved with bringing him back. I knew at this point that he would be a different type of character than when I first left him, and I wanted to tackle that character. Writers like Pete and Grant have fleshed him out more. He had more dimension than when I had first started on him way back when. That was just something I wanted to be involved with.

Tomasi: Yeah, Andy saw me in an alley one night and accosted me. He slammed me against a wall and said, "I better be a part of this, or I'm gonna kill ya!" [Laughs] It was pretty close to that anyway. Seriously, having edited the book when Grant [Morrison] and Andy created Damian, it was my pleasure. I was so psyched to think that Andy would be doing two double-sided issues of this. So when he offered to close this out, it was great.

IGN: You guys were mentioning Grant. Did he have any input on this story and the new twist on Robin, with his powers?

Tomasi: No, actually, he didn't. It was more of, Grant had given me the Pope's blessing when he left the book. From then on, when I see Grant every so often at a con, he just looks up and smiles and says, "You're doing a great job, man. Awesome."

IGN: One of the big moments was when Batman has the crystal, and he's about to stab it into Damian's sarcophagus. He says, "Don't make me choose," and he gets these flashbacks to his parents. Can you explain that scene and what his big choice was?

Tomasi: The crystal at that point, in that moment, is reading his heart in a way. It's basically saying he could bring back his parents or his son. It can't be both, so he obviously ends up bringing back his son. So it's pretty clear-cut in that regard. Actually, I'm opening the page right now. It's so awesome. Such great drawing. Looks great, Andy.

Kubert: Thanks! [Laughs] I'm looking at it too.

Tomasi: And I have to say really quickly too, the team -- [artists] Jonathan Glapion and Brad Anderson -- just beautiful stuff. But that moment, it was a matter of, he had to choose, and he picked his son.

IGN: Andy, what was it like drawing the big confrontation with Kalibak? It was incredible seeing him fighting the Bat-family and watching him getting taken out with the Batplane.

Kubert: You know, Pete couldn't have geared this script more to what I'd want to do. When I read the script, I just couldn't wait to get started on it. A character like Kalibak hearkens me back to the days when I drew Thor. He's this big, giant character where everything's big and everything's loud. That is the way that I approached pretty much the whole issue, and especially that fight scene with the giant penny, with the Batplane slamming into Kalibak -- everything. That kind of stuff is just so much fun to do. The character stuff is a lot of fun to do also, but the high-adventure, action stuff is really what I'm geared towards.

Tomasi: And boy do you kill it. [Laughs]

IGN: So let's talk about Damian. He's back, but now he's got superpowers. What inspired this twist, and what can you tell us about what he can do? He's clearly got super strength, speed, flight -- is that it, or will there be more?

Tomasi: I guess you'll just have to read as you go. It was also just a question too of -- I didn't also want to throw in a smorgasbord of powers. So in the next couple issues you'll see the stuff that he can do. But like I said, if you base it off of what I mentioned about a smorgasbord, I wanted to be careful that I wasn't kitchen-sinking so many powers that it just seemed too silly.

IGN: And what inspired you to give Damian superpowers?

Tomasi: We needed something coming out of it that felt like a change, felt like there was a reaction, a result, to all that had just happened. So it's obviously something that they're now going to have to deal with, that changes the relationship between father and son even further. Because when you come out of a story like this too, you want to make sure to tie a bow around certain aspects of it, but at the same time, you don't want to tie the bow so tight that you end all the inherent drama that can come spinning out of it. The key of periodical writing is that there's still inherent drama coming out of a story, even after it ends.

IGN: How does it change the dynamic of Batman and Damian, because Batman still has to tell him what to do, but now, if he wanted, Damian could just kick Batman to the moon.

Tomasi: [Laughs] That's like any father/son relationship, right? Kids, they can do whatever they want; they know everything. That doesn't change. It's a situation that Bruce and Damian are going to have to work through, just like they worked through their earlier stuff. So it's just constantly, as that old expression goes that people talk about with storytelling: you put your characters up in a tree and just start throwing rocks at them. You make sure they find a way to deal with it.

IGN: Andy, what's it like drawing Damian now that he's got powers? Before, he was like this very lean athlete-type character, but now, like you said, he's picking up giant pennies and hitting supervillains with them.

Kubert: Right, right. Well, you know, you draw him picking up giant pennies and hitting supervillains with them! [Laughs] Actually, since when I drew the character first with Grant way back when, he was a different character back then. Even when I started drawing him in this issue, he's much more of a dimensional character. It was really like drawing a brand new character. So when he did have the superpowers and he was fighting with the giant penny and the Batmobile, all that kind of stuff, you just have to approach it a little differently. You just try to make him look as believable as you can, that this little kid can actually do all this stuff. Maybe I was trying to channel a little bit of Superboy in there too, because that's who he reminded me of a bit. He's kind of got superpowers, and he reminded me of Superboy in those terms.

Tomasi: Yeah, absolutely. A little Superboy. Imagine Bruce having to deal with this aspect of Damian now. It changes the dynamic of the Dynamic Duo.

Kubert: Yeah, and like you said, Joshua, it's kind of cool to see Damian kicking his father's butt! It adds a whole new twist to the character. I think it keeps him interesting and fresh.

Tomasi: I think it all hearkens back to kids' relationships with their parents, where -- I mean, my son, he's 11 now, and he always wants to wrestle, always wants to see if he can kick my ass. [Laughs] And not yet, thank God, but eventually he will pin me and toss me to the curb.

Kubert: Just like my son does to me now! [Laughs]

IGN: A lot of the time there's contention over who gets to take over a mantle. What was your decision to have Red Robin, Red Hood and Batgirl all voluntarily give the Robin mantle to Damian, no questions asked?

Tomasi: It was sort of built in from the beginning. The A story was always about getting Damian back and dealing with Bruce as he goes on that journey. But the B story of this big story was to bring the Death of the Family into the next stage, which was getting the family back together, the "Return of the Family," to sort of rebuild what was broken. So back in Scott's Death of the Family stuff, there was a question of slowly putting bridges back together, and of course one of those was them willing to sacrifice their lives to go to Apokalips and help Batman get Damian back and return at the end, realize that they'd all moved on in many ways. So they know that Damian is Robin. It's as simple as that. "Here you go," symbolically. "We did this for you, and we know that you're the one who deserves to be Robin."

IGN: And I loved the very Damian-ish touches, like his animals all being there. Bat-Cow even kind of helped.

Tomasi: [Laughs] Yep, Bat-Cow came in at the right moment to help save Damian in a little moment in time there, with some natural occurrence that the readers will see. It gives that little second, that brief moment of Titus, that one-two-punch with Titus and Bat-Cow, to let Damian get the upper hand. I really tried to make sure that everything came into play. When I'm getting all these great pages with Titus fighting Kalibak from Andy -- I remember Andy seeing Bat-Cow and going, "We can do this? Are we going to be able to do this, with the poop?" [Laughs] I was like, "Yeah, man, we'll fight for it! We'll do it!"

IGN: Andy, what was your favorite thing to draw in the Robin Rises: Alphaissue?

Kubert: Honestly, it's really hard to pick one. I can't pick one. There are splash pages, double-page splash pages of things -- I love drawing Alfred. Kalibak was a blast. I can't pick one. I really can't. It was all really a lot of fun. No, I can't pick one -- I'm just flipping through now.

Tomasi: I'm trying to think too, if you'd asked me the question, what's my favorite page that Andy drew in here, I gotta say there's too many. I don't know! I can't pick a favorite. There are small panels too that stand out, that are great, even aside from the big spreads and splashes. Gah, there's so much cool stuff. It's a comic book in the purest sense of the word.

Kubert: Yeah, it's very comic book-y. [Laughs]

IGN: I'm gonna settle it for you guys. The best thing you drew was Bat-Cow.

Tomasi: [Laughs] See, Andy? I was right!

Kubert: You were right! Chalk one up for you. You're exactly right.

IGN: I have just one more question. What do you want to say to fans to get them exciting for what's coming up next for Batman and Robin?

Tomasi: I would just say look at the last two-page spread that Andy did and get juiced up right from that, and know that there are some really big things coming. That's about all I can say at the moment.

IGN: The spread of Batman and Robin, right? And Robin's flying?

Tomasi: Yes.

IGN: Yeah, that gave me chills. That's an incredible thing to see.

Kubert: For me, the book, artistically, is I think a high point in my career, but it's not just me that did it. I had a couple of other people who helped me out: Jonathan Glapion did an awesome job; the colorist, Brad Anderson, did a great job. Really, everyone that worked on it here did top-notch work. I'm just very happy with the whole thing. It just really, really worked out well.

Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Game of Thrones, Spider-Man, or Super Smash Bros. are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter and IGN.